


Animal Submission

by manic_intent



Series: New Blood [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, That Omegaverse AU that leans into animal traits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:59:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22918096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “So, uh. You and John. Y’all married now?” Hosea asked.Arthur startled so violently that he nearly tipped off the boat and into the lake. Dutch grabbed his arm, righting him as the boat rocked alarmingly beneath the three of them. Hosea held on to his hat. “What the fuck?” Arthur said.“Well,” Dutch said, glancing at Hosea, “you and John, I didn’t see it coming, but I guess it made sense. What with both of you being halfwolf and growing up together and all. Thing is. What Hosea and I are trying to say is. Wolves mate for life, yeah?”
Relationships: John Marston/Arthur Morgan
Series: New Blood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647229
Comments: 14
Kudos: 236





	Animal Submission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bbb136](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbb136/gifts).



> For bbb136, who asked for more from the New Blood ‘verse, John/Arthur, RDR2. General tensions of the camp explored after the events in New Blood, maybe some romance. 
> 
> I read an incredible werewolf book recently called Mongrels, by Native American writer Stephen Graham Jones. It’s visceral body horror mashed together with werewolf lore. It’s so good that it’s going to influence my werewolf stuff, even this fic, which is sort of more werewolf-adjacent. Read it if you can find it ♥

“So, uh. You and John. Y’all married now?” Hosea asked.

Arthur startled so violently that he nearly tipped off the boat and into the lake. Dutch grabbed his arm, righting him as the boat rocked alarmingly beneath the three of them. Hosea held on to his hat. “What the fuck?” Arthur said. 

“Well,” Dutch said, glancing at Hosea, “you and John, I didn’t see it coming, but I guess it made sense. What with both of you being halfwolf and growing up together and all. Thing is. What Hosea and I are trying to say is. Wolves mate for life, yeah?” 

“…Jesus,” Arthur groaned, pulling his hat down briefly over his eyes. He did not need to be having this conversation on a day this humid and sticky-hot, with the grungy algae scent of the lake thick around them, giving him a mild headache. 

Arthur didn’t much like being out over so much water on a small boat. Sure he could swim, but he was always hyper-aware of the murk, the smell, the striped shadows near the bank that could be logs, could be crocs. Felt unnatural. Dutch and Hosea taught Arthur how to swim, taught Arthur how to fish, but they knew how he got on open water. That was probably why they were here. 

“Which isn’t something we have a problem with,” Hosea said, reeling in his line and recasting it with an easy flick. “But y’all ain’t kids no more, and if there’s something we need to know now that y’all are back in the fold—”

“Like whether John is pregnant,” Dutch said. 

“I did not think this conversation could get any worse,” Arthur said, fascinated despite himself. “Firstly, that ain’t possible for John. All right? John’s an omega halfwolf, that doesn’t mean he’s got a… Anyway, it ain’t happening.” 

“Okay.” Dutch pulled at his moustache. Arthur wasn’t sure if Dutch looked relieved or disappointed. 

“Secondly, how in Tarnation did y’all conclude that we was married?” Arthur asked, dreading the answer. 

“We-ell,” Hosea said, raising his eyebrows, “don’t wolves mate for life?” 

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose and held up a finger. “Wolves. Wolves do. I ain’t a wolf, and neither is John. We got an… understanding, sure. But we ain’t married, Christ. I feel like we’ve gone back in time to when the three of us first met and y’all had the strangest ideas about halfwolf people.” 

Hosea and Dutch exchanged glances. “What?” Arthur asked, irritated. 

“On one hand, I’m glad to see I was right about some things being the way they are, son, but on the other hand, I thought we’d taught you better than that,” Dutch said, frowning. 

“Can y’all stop pussyfooting around and tell me what the fuck’s your problem with me now?” Arthur said, trying to keep a lid on his temper. “If it’s about us leaving the gang, hell, we came back, didn’t we?” The break had even been fun at first, just him and John and the wide, quiet world beyond the mountains. It’d been Arthur who’d grown restless. He’d missed everyone, even the people he hadn’t thought he’d grow to miss. 

John, though.

“Did you have this talk with John?” Hosea asked. 

“No?”

“Might want to think about it,” Dutch said and cast his lure, pulling down the brim of his hat. 

The words itched under Arthur’s skin even as he sniffed loudly and turned to the open water. Sure, John was readjusting badly to camp life. He picked fights with anyone willing to give him the time of day, and in a gang like Dutch’s, that was asking for grief. Everyone’s hands drifted real close to their holsters at the best of times. The thing was, now that Arthur knew what he was looking at, he knew this side of John for what it was. He’d seen it in himself at John’s age, this angry, hungry, volatile creature, hankering either to break the world or be broken by it. The open frontier helped, but the plains weren’t as open or as wild as they used to be. 

The sky bruised indigo by the time they got back to camp. No hide nor hair of John to be seen. Arthur sucked his teeth in irritation as Dutch and Hosea dropped their catch over at Pearson’s to be scaled for dinner. Damn that boy. Damn the waxing moon, too, and damn Dutch for putting ideas in Arthur’s head. 

“Arthur?” 

“What d’you want?” Arthur coughed and tempered the snarl in his tone as Abigail jumped. Coltish young woman, smart and quick-fingered to boot. Abigail had done the rounds of the men at camp right quick when she’d signed up, but the same survivor’s instinct that had her flirting with the Callahans had steered her away from Arthur. Not John, though. John, she’d befriended. Rage and hunger and all. “Sorry. Moon puts me in a mood.”

Mention of the moon usually eased down any hackles Arthur raised by accident or device. Abigail smiled unevenly. “Maybe that’s why John rode off on his own.” 

“Did he now.” That rankled. In the months John had spent wandering with Arthur, they hadn’t ventured beyond shouting range from each other. “He say why?”

“Just saddled up and went.” Abigail pointed into the growing dark. 

Arthur sucked his teeth again and stalked over to his horse. Boadicea snorted, whinnying and pricking her ears. She was used to his moods, good and bad both, but today she backed off and ducked her head as he approached. “What’s wrong with you, girl?” Arthur bit out as she shied. “C’mon. Quiet down. Easy now, easy. Easy, girl.” Arthur gentled his voice, whispering to Boadicea until she tossed her head but let him mount up. 

“You going too?” Abigail had a pickpocket’s soft-footed gait—she’d stolen up behind Arthur as he settled into the saddle. 

“Not for long.” Arthur nudged his knees into Boadicea. They set off at a trot when Arthur wanted to urge Boadicea into a canter, picking through tall shadows, until the gloam swallowed the camp and the deep dark ate the path. Didn’t matter. John wouldn’t have ridden out to the traveller’s road, wouldn’t have gone seeking human company. Arthur knew this in the quiet. John would’ve turned off the path once he was out of sight of the scouts. He wouldn’t have been planning on staying out too long, not without packing supplies. 

“Fuck,” Arthur said. This time of year got dark real fast. Soon he’d be risking a broken leg on Boadicea, especially if Arthur tried to ride her off the path. Turning her nose to the main road, Arthur let her pick her way through the trees. 

John waited for Arthur at the border where the trees thinned out. His hat sat rakishly over tangled hair, his rangy frame filling out into one of Arthur’s old shirts, a ragged bandana looped loosely over his throat. John’s big brown horse, Old Boy, quivered under him, eyes wide, ears flattened. He looked right ready to buck. 

Small wonder there. The moon wasn’t yet full, but John’s eyes shone silver in the dark. Boadicea whinnied, slowing to a stop. “John,” Arthur said. He could taste hunger in the air.

“Hey, Arthur,” John whispered. That voice of his, forever caught in a hoarse rasp, a wolf’s snarl poorly stitched into a human throat. 

“Getting late,” Arthur said, trying to act relaxed. “We should head back to camp.” 

“You should.” 

“I said ‘we’.” 

John glanced away at the trees, licking his lips. It was his hunger that Arthur was breathing in, that choked out the air around John, a mantle of longing and frustration and misery. Arthur’s mouth watered, his teeth digging into his lip. “John,” Arthur said. 

“They ain’t like us,” John said, lifting his chin. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Abigail and the others are human. Same as we are.” 

John stiffened at Abigail’s name, turning his silver eyes up to the sky. “Y’know what I heard once? Was when I was a kid. A wandering preacher told me, a long time ago, the first halfwolf people really were half-wolf. They could change from human to wolf and back, whenever they liked. That was what killed them all, he said. The change.”

“How’s that?” Arthur said. John sounded calm. Calm was good. 

“Say you changed without stripping down. The clothes you wear would fold up into your wolf self. Your shirt could melt into your skin, your belt buckle into your gut; your shoes could fuse into your bones. Or if you ate a chicken as a wolf and changed back. All them sharp bones, puncturing through a human gut. People who could be one form or another were unnatural, said the preacher. That’s why God punished them with terrible deaths.” 

“This preacher sounds like an asshole.” Arthur had met his share over the years. 

“You get the dreams too, don’t you? The forest, the moon. The change.” 

“Long as I remember.” 

“How can you stand it?” 

“Stand what, John?” Arthur asked gently.

John shivered, his hands clenching tight over the pommel of his saddle. “Being like this. Like this ain’t us. Like we’re stuck.” 

“You miss it,” Arthur guessed. “The way you get during a full moon. When everything’s sharper. Feels like you’re waking up from a dream, except you’re awake only for a night. Then you’re pulled back under.” 

“How’d you deal with that?” 

“Lot of our kind like to drink. Smoke. Eat. Fuck.” Arthur watched as John shivered again, licking his lips. “Wait for the moon.” 

“You ain’t like that.” 

“I got good at hiding it,” Arthur lied. 

John growled, a serrated sound that made Old Boy prance under him and whicker. “You can’t lie to me any longer, Arthur. I smell it now.” 

“I got good at pretending.” That was closer to the truth, but not quite there. Fact was, Arthur wasn’t sure how he’d grown to be comfortable in his skin. The quiet helped, when he was alone on the frontier, but Dutch and the others helped too. “You learn how to ground yourself, I guess. I don’t know. I ain’t omega.” Arthur’s eyes would never turn silver out of a full moon.

“We shouldn’t have come back." 

“You wanna go? Go.” Arthur gestured past the trees. “Dutch and Hosea, they’d understand.” 

“You’re staying,” John said.

“Yeah. I’m staying.” Arthur wheeled Boadicea around, taking her back to the camp. She wanted to break into a canter, but he forced her to keep at a leisurely trot. John didn’t follow Arthur. He stayed out of the camp until dinner had wound down, until most of the camp bedded down for the night. Arthur smoked, washed up, and curled up on his bed. In the morning, John lay snug against Arthur, snoring softly, his mouth pressed close to Arthur’s throat.

#

Blackwater was a goddamned disaster. They’d fled into the deep snow, bleeding people. Wound up in an abandoned outpost with almost no supplies and the deep winter already upon them. As they starved, Arthur wished he was a wolf—an actual wolf. Something that could stalk on soft paws through the snow, sniff out rabbits and deer. It was wishful thinking. In a winter this bad, even the wolves starved. Arthur could hear them about at night, howling their hunger into the sky.

John took to riding further and further out. Most times, he didn’t bother to come back with prey. Arthur understood. The stink of desperation and hunger and sickness in the camp made Arthur’s head swim. He’d heard stories of what happened to people who were trapped in snow, on boats, in caves. First, they’d eat the horses. Then the dead. After that—well. Would it be Abigail first? Pearson? The Reverend? Or the people who weren’t all people, by the way the Church liked to count such things, the descendants of Eve and a wolf? 

John stayed out for a day, then another. It was Abigail who begged Arthur to go out looking. “Need me to come with?” Javier asked as Arthur grumbled and bitched but saddled up. Dutch had shrugged when Arthur said he was going, too hungry to argue. 

“I’m good,” Arthur said. 

“Nagual.”

“What?”

“It’s what we call wolf people, south of the border. The nagualli.” Javier smiled, flashing nicotine-stained teeth. “You make a pact with the devil.” 

“Instead of telling a lie with Eve, eh?” Arthur smirked.

Javier rolled his eyes. “Keep laughing, güero. I’m trying to say: I don’t think John is dead.” 

“Dead ain’t what I’m worried about.” What could kill a grown halfwolf out here but another halfwolf? There was a reason why townsfolk tried to kill them young.

#

Arthur found the wolves first, a bloody trail of bodies that led up to a stone ridge. The first two had been shot. The last two, knifed. There was a hell of a lot of blood. Grimacing, Arthur tied his skittish horse to an outcrop close by and approached the ridge. “John?” he called.

Laughter broke against the mountain flank, guttering into a low snarl. Shit. Arthur forged through the snow, his breath steaming into plumes before his lips. The thick stench of blood made his mouth water as he found the cave, tucked high over the ridge. Arthur slipped once as he climbed, cursing as his stomach dropped into his boots. He gasped as he forced himself up, hauling his bulk into the hollowed stone. 

Silver eyes glared at him from the dark. “Shit,” Arthur said, looking John over. “You’re a fucking mess.” 

“Wolves taste like shit,” John rasped through his bloody mouth. His face was torn up, as were his arms and throat. Still he lived, crouched in the corner of the hollow, licking his wounds. Arthur took a step closer and froze as John growled, baring his teeth.

“S’matter with you? We’ve got to get you back to camp. Abigail’s worried sick about your idiot ass.” 

“Figured that’s why you came.” John flattened back against the stone. “Go away, Arthur. Tell them you couldn’t find me.” 

“Yeah? That’s what you want? You jackass. Your horse’s gone. You’d be lost up here—you’d starve.” 

“Been doing fine for myself. That’s what I reckon. Don’t you smell death on the others? It’s a-coming for them. Hosea, Lenny, Molly… they’re all marked.” 

Arthur scowled. “So you up and leave them to fend for themselves? That ain’t right.” 

“It’ll come for you too,” John said softly, his eerie silver eyes fixed on Arthur’s. “That’s what scares me.” 

Arthur couldn’t stop the shudder that racked through him or the anger that rose in its wake. “Fuck off.” 

“You don’t even want to understand. Blackwater… what the hell were we doing in Blackwater? Dutch shooting passers-by, Jenny dying—” John made a choked-off gasp, shaking his head. “Why can’t you see?” 

“I see it.” Arthur advanced cautiously, step by slow step, hands up. “I see that Dutch’s been fucking up more, that this road he’s picked for us all ain’t likely got a happy ending at the end of it. I see him make monsters of the kids he picks up, boys and girls both. I see the way hate and revenge are eating up the last good measure of him as a man, when there wasn’t much of that in him in the first place. Yeah, I see it.” 

John jerked up onto his haunches, incredulous. “Then, why?” 

“Because they’re all the family I have,” Arthur said, the truth torn from him between the sky and the deep winter. “Same as you.”

John let out a wet laugh, turning his face away and shivering. He allowed Arthur to close in, to check his wounds over gently. The bites and claw marks were closing sluggishly, but they were closing. Arthur went out of the cave for firewood and supplies from his saddlebags. He skinned one of the wolves and cut strips off its haunches. Hauling everything up to the hollow nearly went badly—he slipped a couple of times—and Arthur’s sweat soaked his shirt by the time he was done. Building a fire at the mouth of the cave, Arthur cooked, fed John, and ate. It took another trip before their bellies grew full. John curled up under the wolfskin and slept instantly. He snarled and whimpered to himself in his sleep.

#

The wolf carcasses fed the gang for a week. John stayed quiet on the ride back, and given how torn-up he’d looked when they’d made it back to camp, not even Dutch had asked many questions. They got a house in the corner of the old trading post to themselves, which Arthur fixed up as best he could. John slept most of the first couple of days burrowed up under blankets and coats, the worst of the blood and gore scrubbed off outside.

John’s wounds closed up to ugly pink scars by the third day, and as Arthur inspected the large gashes over John’s face, he asked, “So why’d you run off this time? You pulling on funny ideas about the two of us or what? If so, we’d better let that all out before you do it again and freeze to death.” 

“Dutch and Hosea asked you to talk to me?”

“Yeah. Before Blackwater. They thought we was married or some shit. Like wolves do.” Arthur shook his head with a chuckle. “Wolf packs don’t even work like that. Only mated pair in a wolf pack’s the alpha male and female. People like us ain’t nowhere the same, but you know how vanilla humans get.” 

John didn’t laugh. He rolled onto his flank on the bed, looking up steadily at Arthur. “You make that sound like a bad thing.” 

“Ain’t a good thing or a bad thing. It is how it is.” 

“I like the idea of it.” John twisted away, turning his back on Arthur. 

“What, mating for life? People? Shit. I can’t even begin to think of the many ways it could go wrong for people,” Arthur said, stretching out his legs on the cold floor. “I’ve seen so many marriages go rat fucking sideways. Imagine some lady never being able to get away from some asshole who’d beat her black and blue whenever he’s drunk. Hell, the law’s goddamned cruel even the way it is now. Having to prove fault or adultery or abuse.”

“You been reading into this?” John asked, startled enough that he looked over his shoulder. 

Arthur laughed mirthlessly. “My mother wanted to leave my father for years. They didn’t have the money for no lawyers. Not that it would’ve worked: neither of them had what you’d call clean hands. I don’t know what’s happened to them since Dutch bought me off them, but it’s likely my father either drank himself to death or beat my mother to death. Humans.” 

“Humans,” John said. He reared up, hunching himself down and leaning in, tentatively nuzzling Arthur’s jaw. It looked like John was submitting, as though he were asking for comfort, but Arthur knew better. He could read the tension in John, the way his teeth were slightly bared. Arthur pulled John closer, searching for silver in his warm brown eyes. He kissed John when he found none, easing them both down on the bed. 

John’s arms curled around Arthur’s back, jumping to the buttons on his coat. Arthur kicked off his shoes and dumped his coat on a bedside chair, pulling the covers over them both and tucking John under his chin, breathing. “Arthur?” John whispered. 

“Hrmm?” Arthur shifted until they both found a comfortable fit. 

“I love you.” 

Arthur nuzzled John’s forehead. “Yeah, I know.” He huffed as John smacked him on the shoulder. “What?” 

“You’re supposed to say it back, asshole.” 

“Says who?” Arthur said, chuckling as John hissed and socked him in the stomach. “Oof. Who’s gonna love some jackass who runs off on his own and gets his face chewed off by wolves just ‘cos he’s bored? Some jackass who doesn’t listen to instructions in Blackwater and nearly fucks up the getaway? Some—” 

Arthur grunted as John kissed him hard on the mouth, bruising him. Rolling on top of John, Arthur growled as John bit down hard, blooding him. The shallow wound sealed as John licked at it, panting as he swiped blood into Arthur’s mouth with his tongue. “Know what I’m scared of?” John said, digging his fingernails into the back of Arthur’s neck. “I keep thinking. Maybe you’re with me because there ain’t any other omega around. Maybe you’re just fucking around, the way you do in towns. When it was just two of us, I could pretend that it wasn’t.” 

“Kid—”

“Ain’t a _kid_.”

“All right, all right.” Arthur kissed John on his forehead. “You’re all grown up.” 

“Now you’re just trying to rile me up.” John looked tired. “Mean bastard.” 

Arthur bit down the words on the tip of his tongue. He forced out a laugh and rolled off John, slinging an arm over John’s waist and snuggling up. “It’s too damned cold for funny business,” Arthur said, pointedly closing his eyes. 

John growled and shoved at Arthur’s arm. When Arthur refused to budge, John settled down, a satisfied rumble vibrating through his skinny frame. Arthur didn’t answer it with one of his own, even though he wanted to. He’d sensed the death-pall hanging over the gang, same as John had. Arthur wouldn’t run. Life had a cruel way of coming full circle, especially with violent ones like theirs. Someday, when it was safe for John to make a break for it on his own, it’d be easier for him to do that without baggage slowing him down. Arthur ignored the constriction in his chest, the way his lips tried to twitch up over his teeth.

#

“She’s calm,” the Reverend said, “barely.” He flushed in embarrassment as the women clustered by the door bristled. “I mean, for what she’s been through, she’s doing well.”

“Well then, y’all are up.” Abigail pushed a still-steaming bowl of stew into Arthur’s hands. 

“This is a real bad idea,” Arthur said for the fifth time. 

“Miss Adler’s halfwolf, ain’t she? So’s you and John. So git in there. She’s your kin,” Mrs Grimshaw said, bundled up so thickly against the cold that only her glaring eyes were visible under her hat and scarf. “She needs help and comfort after what happened to her. Damned shame. Those O’Driscoll bastards.” 

Arthur conceded the point, if only because John shrugged and shoved through the door before him. The bloody, heavily wounded halfwolf that Dutch had insisted they rescue out of the remote ranch that the O’Driscolls had attacked had bitten Hosea, bruised Charles’ ribs, and gouged a chunk out of Arthur’s arm before Dutch had talked her down. She’d only allowed the Reverend to inspect her wounds because she was exhausted, in Arthur’s opinion. Wasn’t because she was calm. 

Sadie Adler glared out at them from the den she’d made of clothes and rags on the bed. An alpha. She sniffed loudly as John took the bowl from Arthur and approached, setting the soup on the rickety table beside the bed before backing off, hands held up. “Y’all are a mated pair,” Sadie said. 

“Yeah,” John said, even as Arthur shook his head. Sadie frowned at them both, cocking her head. Someone—maybe the Reverend—had wiped the blood off her face and throat. The terrible gash across her forehead and above her ear was still seeping. Keeping her eyes fixed on them both, Sadie pulled the bowl to herself and ate.

“I don’t see many of our kind in these parts,” Sadie said, muffled. 

“Most of us don’t survive civilisation,” Arthur said. Like John, he was careful to stay relaxed, his hands loose by his hips. “Mind if we sit?”

Sadie made a throaty, bitter laugh. “Be my guest.” 

John sat on a chair, Arthur on a crate. Sadie’s eyes tracked John more warily than she did Arthur. “Your husband, was he—” John began.

“Nah. Human.” Sadie laughed again, just as bitter. “My ma always said it wasn’t gonna end well. Living away from the pack with a human. Said if we didn’t kill each other, the other humans would get us.” 

“The pack,” John repeated, perking up. 

Sadie’s lip curled. “Don’t bother. They wouldn’t take you or your alpha. Even if they would, I wouldn’t go if I were you. It’s a fucking cult, not a family or a real pack. Worshipping the moon, ‘blood purity’, all that shit. I was glad to escape when I did.” 

“Oh,” John said. He didn’t sound disappointed, only resigned.

“Funny arrangement y’all have here,” Sadie said, glancing at Arthur. “Leader of your pack’s human. Dutch, that’s his name, eh? What’s the deal? Adopted father?” 

“Good guess,” Arthur said, wary. 

“We’re predictable, is what we are.” Sadie polished off the last of her bowl and set it aside. “It don’t end well. Y’all know that, right?” 

“You’re free to leave whenever you want,” Arthur said before John could comment. “Or not. It’s up to you. You wanna go after you’ve healed up, we’ll wish you well. If you stay, you pull your weight.” 

“Dutch said he knew what I felt. Said he knew what it was like to have Colm O’Driscoll take someone you love away from you. He lying?” Sadie asked. 

“No. Her name was Annabelle,” John said. 

“My husband’s dead, our livestock killed, our ranch’s been burned.” Sadie laughed hollowly. “Where can I go? If y’all are hunting Colm, I’ll stay. I’ll pull my weight.” She offered the bowl to John, who got up to take it. He stiffened as Sadie grabbed his wrist with bony fingers, rising stiffly to her knees, sniffing his throat. 

“Miss Adler,” Arthur said. He’d jumped to his feet and taken a step forward without even thinking. Sadie smiled crookedly at them both with little humour, sinking back onto the sheets. 

“Y’all should sort your own shit out,” Sadie said, curling up and closing her eyes. “Do it fast. Full moon’s a-coming.”

#

The bright moon’s effects hit early. Sadie retired with a blunt warning that she wasn’t to be disturbed, barring her door. John dragged Arthur to their shack, ignoring the jokes from the gang thrown at their back. Arthur usually took that sort of shit with good humour, but tonight every jibe hurt. He snarled under his breath as John pointedly slammed the door shut, bit down as John dragged him over for a kiss.

“Shouldn’t fucking let you,” John whispered as Arthur walked them over to the bed. “You’re just messing around, ain’t you? Ain’t you?” He ripped Arthur’s shirt, his hands locked into claws. “Fuck you, Arthur. _Talk_.” 

“You don’t need me to talk,” Arthur said, shoving John down on the bed and climbing on after him. 

“You’re scared of the truth,” John said, his silver eyes accusing Arthur from the pretty sprawl he made even against filthy sheets. 

“What are you yammering about, boy?” They were wearing far too many clothes, and John wasn’t bothering to help.

“This thing that we’ve got,” John rasped, wriggling under Arthur as Arthur unwound their belts and holsters. “Arthur, do you love me? Answer me, or get off me— _answer me_.” 

Arthur froze up as he felt the muzzle of John’s pistol dig up under his ribs. “Jesus, John, easy there.” 

“Answer me.” John looked scraped down to the bone, burned out. “You rather I go to Sadie?” 

“I… what? No!” Arthur flinched, his hackles rising quick.

“Because I will,” John grit out, shoving the pistol hard enough into Arthur that it hurt, “if you don’t tell me what the _fuck_ is wrong with you.” 

Arthur forced himself to sit back, to breathe slow even though every nerve in his body burned for a fight, for a fuck, for a little blood. “Okay. Okay. You had the right of it. Running away for this. You shouldn’t have come back with me. This path ain’t gonna end well for nobody. Someday, you’re gonna have to get clear of it all.” 

“I hear a lot of ‘you’ in there and nothing of ‘we’,” John said, his gun trained on Arthur. “You ain’t Dutch’s son, Arthur. Ain’t his dog, neither. You know that, don’t you?” 

“They’re still _family_ ,” Arthur snapped, pushed to the edge. 

“That ain’t everything. Doesn’t forgive everything. Sometimes family will do you wrong. Doesn’t mean you got to roll with the punches and keep coming back until you’re dead. Sometimes you just got to do what’s best for yourself.” John holstered his gun and grabbed Arthur by his shirt. “Or I’ll make you. God be my witness, but I ain’t letting you die for anyone. Let alone a man like Dutch and his bullshit. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” Arthur said, swallowing hard, dizzy. If this was a fight of some sort, he’d lost. He let John drag him over, strip them both down. He kissed the slow-sealing scars over John’s skinny frame, the bones that pushed against his skin. He imagined them both twisting from man to wolf, legs dislocating and resetting into different joints, faces elongating, new teeth shoving through their gums. As John snarled and kissed him, Arthur imagined them scrambling free of the outpost, hurtling into the deep winter, joining the howl. Free of humanity and dead to humanity. He shuddered and kissed John back. 

“So answer me,” John gasped as they kissed. “I will hurt you, Arthur. Answer me.” 

“You wanna hurt me or save me?” Arthur asked, chuckling as John growled and bit him on the throat, digging in his teeth to leave a mark. “I don’t know what love is,” Arthur said as he nuzzled John’s throat, as he kissed down heaving muscle to John’s flat belly. “Flowers and letters and love songs, I ain’t doing none of that for no one.” He kissed the tip of John’s thickening cock and smirked as John hissed and clawed at Arthur’s shoulders. “Kids and a pony and a ranch? I ain’t good for that either.” John squirmed and bucked as Arthur licked him between his thighs, lifting his hips for a better angle. The cold didn’t touch them with the moon so high. John’s eyes burned silver, his fingers clawing at the sheets. Neither of them wanted to be doing this closed up under a roof, but they stayed tethered to necessity. The O’Driscolls were still out there somewhere. 

“Will you kill for me, Arthur?” John asked, his smile drawn flat against bared teeth. “Will you die for me?” 

“That what you want from me?” Arthur said, surprised. He tried to take John into his mouth and growled as John grabbed him by the back of his neck and held him still. 

“I want you to live. Even if it ain’t for my sake.” 

“That’s what I want for you too,” Arthur confessed. 

John let him be, trembling and stuffing his wrist into his mouth as Arthur went back to work. John thickened nicely in Arthur’s mouth as Arthur worked in a finger to the knuckle in John’s wet heat, then a second as John growled and lifted his knees. The smell of them both drove Arthur’s hunger, of high moon, of lust and sweat and musk. He was impatient with prep, with John writhing under his touch, both of them fair clawing out of their skins. With the bitterness and salt of John’s cock stretching his throat open, heavy on his tongue as Arthur sucked, as John snarled and thrust into his mouth. Deeper and deeper, until Arthur was gagging on it, until he’d gotten three fingers worked in and John was keening in frustration, nails gouging furrows into Arthur’s cheeks. 

“I want you to live,” John snarled into Arthur’s ear as Arthur pulled off and lined himself up. He gasped it again as Arthur pressed inside, shivering, the both of them a bad fit like this, face to face. Arthur bit down on John’s shoulder, grunting as he ground in, trying to last. It didn’t work. John’s heels locked against his back once Arthur was balls deep and instinct ripped control out of Arthur’s grasp, making him cry out against John’s throat as his knot caught fast. John’s cock jerked against Arthur’s belly as John exhaled, eyes squeezed shut.

#

A stag and a couple of does sprang across the path behind them as their caravan picked slowly down the mountain. John straightened up in his saddle, watching them ago. “Spring took its sweet time coming,” Arthur said. They rode beside Sadie’s wagon, bringing up the rear.

“It’d be good eating,” Sadie told John. 

“Chasing them over the snowmelt? We’d lose a horse,” Arthur said, “and we’re real short on those.” 

“I’ll be back,” John said, glowering at Arthur, turning his horse to the trees. 

“John!” Arthur barked, but John set off without a backward glance. Gritting his teeth, Arthur glared at Sadie.

She stared him down. “You don’t know anything about our kind, do you?” 

“Says the person who married a human.” 

Sadie bared her teeth at Arthur. “You don’t want my help, fine. Ain’t my business nohow. You’re gonna have to choose, though. Someday soon.”

“What are you talking about?” 

“Some of us get along fine, living with humans. Most of us don’t. Not in the long term.” Sadie eyed Arthur evenly. “I’m grateful y’all saved me, but once I get my revenge, I’m gone. You might wanna think things through yourself.” 

“I have,” Arthur said, watching John disappear into the trees. “I know what I’ve got to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @manic_intent  
> my prompt policy, writing etc: manic-intent.tumblr.com
> 
> Refs:  
> https://time.com/4521314/divorce-history-sarah-jessica-parker/


End file.
